Breach Detection Systems: The Future of Anti-Virus Software

Anti-virus software has changed a lot over the past decade, moving from virus scans triggered by a user to comprehensive malware detection in real time. While an often lengthy scan was once your only option to detect threats, protection is becoming more automated, now happening as soon as you encounter malware or other malicious programs. The next step in protecting our computers is a breach detection system (or BDS) that can detect any breach in a network of computers and then contain or remediate all the damage within 48 hours.

Current anti-virus software uses signature-based detection to match a current list of threats to the findings of a search or a software that is currently affecting the computer. Users must keep their anti-virus software updated consistently to combat the latest threats on the internet. Another big problem right now with anti-virus software is how predictable it is. The signature based system allows hackers to test their virus on a system with existing software available to the public before a large scale attack. With a proper breach detection system, any attack will be discovered because detection is not just based on pre-determined signatures, but on reacting to signs of an attack through network traffic analysis and server data. Ideally, a BDS will stop a threat coming from inside the network, from the cloud, or even on an employee’s mobile phone. It will then remediate the damage by quarantine, session termination, and other restrictions.

Breach detection systems help keep entire networks secure and more connected. The Wentworth Technology Services Information Security Office is always looking for better ways to protect the institute and it’s members, broadening our scope protection services will help us with this mission. We employ next generation firewalls to perform these more advanced techniques for malware detection. In addition, there are active and proposed projects for expanding our tools and techniques to improve the security and privacy of your institutional data, feel free to periodically check in on our projects page for more information and status checks on our projects.